Here Is Gone
by LeadYouIn
Summary: The reappearance of a nemesis thought longdead has caused the shinobi nations to prepare for war. To prevent the destruction of Konoha, alliances need to be made between countries, strong enough to unify them throughout the battles ahead, through marriage


Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto

I was deeply dissatisfied with Arranged Marriage. I found myself, later on, realizing how much more rich and entertaining the plot could be and so I decided to redo the story. The basic premise is much the same, only this time around the background and character development will be much better written. I hated how I gave Sakura and Hinata about 99 of the plotline and just left Tenten and especially Ino out there to dry amongst a lot of other things.

I'm sorry to all those of you who were eagerly awaiting Kenji's final decision. I promise you that these chapters will come out a lot faster; this story will definitely be complete before the summer is out.

Changes: The biggest change is I cut Ino out as one of the candidates. I can not think of a storyline for her that I liked enough to keep it in the story. Instead, she and Shikamaru will be….otherwise occupied. She is still in the story and she does play an important role, but she will not be one of the Tsuchikage's choices.

I also changed Ayame's name to Taeko and Kenji's name to Hei just because Ayame and Kenji felt far too cliché to me and I'm trying to rid this story of all the stupid clichés I used the first time around. Also, the prologue for the story (that sets the scene, mood, etc) was written in two parts so that I could draw on a lot of characters' backgrounds in the proceeding chapters. I am way too lazy to post the prologue as two separate chapters so you're getting a really long prologue!

The first part is a sequence of dreams that each girl had that basically explain, rather generally, what has happened to them since Sasuke left the village. Once again, these dreams are very general but the framework in each one will definitely be important components of the characters' storylines. They are arranged in chronological order (i.e. Tenten's first one shows what happened to her right after Sasuke left and her last one shows an even that happened just before this story begins).

Now, enough babbling! On with the story! I hope you like it as much as, if not more than, Arranged Marriage.

The two song titles in this chapter title are from a Within Temptation and an U2 song, respectively.

Prologue: Part One

Memories (All That You Can't Leave Behind)

_Tenten was panting. Neji had just learned some new technique from Hiashi-sama and she had been helping him develop it for his next spar with the leader of the Hyuuga clan. _

'_Just my luck,' she huffed to herself 'the damn technique has to be one that is designed to counteract weapons. F to the U to the C to the-'_

"_Tenrai Jiten!" Neji suddenly whirled into her line of sight, deflecting her weapons back to the exact trajectory they had been thrown from – right back at her. The advantage of the Tenrai Jiten over the Kaiten was that, with the former, there was no chance of the deflected weapons hitting and killing team mates rather than targets, except for right now. Five hundred weapons were hurtling back towards her and all she could do was stare. _

_Tenten expected to feel a rather large amount of pain rather than hearing a dull thud and then a louder thud as she ate dirt, literally. _

_She hoped her face wasn't as red as it felt. "Neji…..er…..you're…." He was on top of her and she was facedown in the dirt. _

_He mumbled something indiscernible before getting off of her as quickly as he could. "Sorry."_

_She took his extended hand and pulled herself up and then began to dust off her clothing. The chuunin uniform she had been practising in was brown but she grinned up at Neji anyways. "Well this definitely beats it turning red, now doesn't it?"  
_

_She felt his hidden smile. "Tch, next time if you're too busy daydreaming to pay attention I'll just let those weapons hit you."_

_Her grin remained plastered on her face. "No you won't."_

Tenten sighed contentedly before slipping into another dream.

Her eyes closed slowly as she finally fell asleep. She was hoping this night would be peaceful. Her dreams of late were not incidents she wanted to remember.

"_You should know this by know, Hinata. If you've closed all of the tenketsu of a subject that you are trying to keep alive what do you have to do?" Hiashi frowned deeply in the general direction of the heiress of his clan._

_She, in return, closed her eyes tightly, hiding the tears that always seemed to find their way out despite her best efforts. 'I'm trying! I really am!'_

"_Y-you …" she paused to try and let her jumbled thoughts sort themselves. "Y-y-you…" It didn't work._

"_Hinata! Your evaluation with the elders of our clan is next week. If you are not found to be a suitable heiress think of the disastrous consequences your weakness will have on your clan's image!"_

_Hinata fiddled with her hands in her lap, a nervous habit she hadn't lost from her genin days. "I'm sorry Otou-san b-but I get n-nervous w-w-whe-" _

"_No more stuttering!" Hiashi slammed his open fist on the tatami mat nearest him. "You need to be strong and you're not! You need know our clan's jutsus and you don't!"_

_He sighed and stood, seeing what his outburst had done to his daughter. 'She was never strong to begin with.' Walking to a nearby shelf he picked up the worn scroll he had assigned her to read yesterday. _

"_Read this," he threw it at her once he was sure she would catch it. "I'll have one of the servants come and test you on its contents later on this evening." He left the room._

_Hinata clutched the scroll to her chest before whispering "You scan the spleen to ensure it hasn't ruptured due to the increased pressure of chakra unable to leave its reserves. If the s-spleen is r-r-rup-ruptured…"_

_She caught a glimpse of her tear-stained face in the mirrored-walls of the dojo. She looked….frail and horribly pained._

'_Naruto never looked this way, even when he was almost dead. What's wrong with you?' _

_She found herself unable to look away from the crying girl in the mirror. "What is wrong with me?"_

Sakura smiled in her sleep and rolled over as her dream began.

"_Sakura-chan, I told you we were lost." Taeko turned around to face Sakura after examining a rock in great detail, every inch of her body exuding her exasperation with their situation. "We've walked by this thing," she paused to slam her fist into the rock, effectively leaving a large dent in it, "ten times in the last hour. The conference is beginning soon and Hokage-sama as well as Tou-san will not be pleased with ei-"_

_Taeko kept on talking as Sakura slapped her hand over her companion's mouth. "Oh, lighten up! We're almost there…we can just say we ran into some nukenin, kicked their asses, and the-"  
_

"_We're still late." Vague amusement twinkled in Taeko's eyes. "I'm excited to see my father again. I do not want to be late. I want to be early. I want to be there before he is."_

_Sakura smiled brightly before pulling Taeko in what she knew (rather what she really really hoped) was the right direction to their meeting spot in the neutral Land of Waterfall. As far as both of them could tell, they were stuck somewhere in the Land of Grass, a country which was definitely not on their side in the escalating tensions between shinobi nations. _

"_This is not a safe place for the apprentice of one of Konoha's Legendary Sannin and the daughter of the Tsuchikage to be, now is it?"_

_Sakura sweatdropped. "I know you're excited to see your Tou-san, but I haven't seen my parents in over eight months! I was doing that training with Tsunade-sama before this mission. I can't wait to see them either."_

"_Are you sure you're not excited so that you can eat some of that world-famous umeboshi and those dumplings your mother makes?" Taeko laughed loudly (for her anyways) as Sakura tried to smack her._

"_Your Otou-san was right. That mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble some day." She began to leap through the trees._

"_Is not! Since when did you talk to my Tou-san about me anyways?"_

_They both laughed as they chased each other the entire way to the Land of Waterfall. They stopped once though. Taeko really needed to pee. _

_Parents….her parents. Kaa-san. Tou-san. _Sakura clenched her fist in her sleep. It was that dream again.

"_I will never heal your damn arms you snake," she spat with as much venom as she could muster in her weakened state. "Get that through your thick head!"_

_Orochimaru glared at her momentarily before his face relaxed into an all too familiar condescending expression, one that mocked her pitiful attempts to fight back at him. He knew something. _

"_Kabuto tells me that you have a family here."_

'_Oh no.' Sakura only hoped that her face displayed none of the terror she felt._

"_Yes," his tongue made its way out of his mouth long enough to lick the side of her face. "Your little friend Ami told us where you lived. Right before he killed her."_

_Her eyes widened in horror. 'Oh, Kami-sama, no! Not Kaa-san and Tou-san!' She began struggling as hard as she could against the chains that held her in place. The preceding rounds of torture had used up all her chakra; she couldn't get loose. _

"_Not them…" she whispered, but it was too late, he was already at the door._

"_You'll see little one." He turned to face her, his yellow eyes somewhat amused. "You'll either heal my arms…" In a moment his tongue was wrapped around her neck so tightly that she couldn't breathe. Sakura gasped and tried to inhale as blackness began encroaching on her vision. _

"…_or your last experience in this world will be watching your parents die excruciating deaths, right before I kill you."_

_Sakura couldn't help it. All her training as a kunoichi could prepare her for dying at the hands of an enemy, but not her parents. The pain, not their injuries, would kill them. As soon as the pressure on her neck was relieved she screamed._

_The snake laughed before closing the door and leaving her with thoughts of better times to try and console herself. _

_It didn't work._

'_Where are they? Tsunade-sama said they should be back now if…_

…_if they were successful'_

_Hinata shook her head to clear her thoughts. Of course Naruto-kun and Sasuke-san were successful. After the near-destruction of Konoha three weeks ago Sasuke had defected back to Konoha and the two of them had followed Orochimaru's trail once he had fled, realizing he couldn't win. No one knew exactly what had happened between the two of them to cause Sasuke to come back on his own accord, but whatever Naruto had done, it had worked._

_No one had told them about Sakura yet – she hadn't woken up since her parents were…_

"_Here they come!" Hinata heard Lee yell out. It was a rather small crowd, after all, no one really wanted to welcome the Kyuubi-container and the Uchiha-traitor back. _

'_I haven't seen him in almost three years! I hope he remembers me…' She began to twiddle her fingers again. "Maybe I should wait until he's seen everyone else. Then there's Sasuke-san too. Naruto-kun will want to stay with him when he speaks to Tsunade-sama and the village elders. I should lea-'_

"_HINATA-CHAN!" Suddenly an orange and black blur was in front of her face as she tried to leave. _

"_N-naruto-kun?" She couldn't help but gasp a little, he was even cuter than before. He was even taller than before! "How did it g-" She couldn't get anymore out before Naruto had crushed her in a vise-like hug. She couldn't move, she couldn't speak, she was turning the colour of a tomato and she loved it. _

"_It's been so long Hinata-chan! You grew out your hair too! I like it this way. Er…not that I didn't like it the other way – that looked great on you too! It's just that this way looks-" He was rubbing the back of his head nervously, just like she remembered._

'_Maybe Naruto-kun hasn't changed as much as I thought he did.' She smiled shyly at him._

"_I-I…ummmm….I-I likemyhairbetterthiswaytoo." She felt her cheeks becoming even more red, if that was possible._

"_Dobe," 'Thank Kami-sama for Sasuke-san' Hinata exhaled in relief. "We need to get to the hospital. It's Sakura."  
_

"_S-Sakura-chan? Is she okay? Wait…how did you get away from Baa-chan?"_

"_Let's go Na-ru-to." It seemed like Sasuke was barely holding in his irritation, or was that concern? "Hinata." He nodded in my direction._

_Naruto began running towards the hospital, but he turned around as he did. "I like your hair better that way too Hinata-chan!" _

_And then he was gone. She couldn't help but smile to herself._

Maybe her dreams weren't so bad after all.

_Tenten glanced at her reflection briefly before leaving her small apartment. They were all going out tonight to celebrate Sasuke finally being finished with his three-years worth of probation. It was all Naruto and Sakura's idea of course, but the rest of them were more than happy to come along. _

_Minus one party-pooper that happened to be waiting for her outside of her building. _

"_Neji," she whined, knowing how much he hated it. "Why don't you ever come inside?"_

"_You were late." He smirked at her as they began walking towards Ichiraku (the one restauraunt in the world that Naruto would eat anything from)._

"_I just had a mission. That stupid anbu vest is so damn hard to take off!" _

_He almost smiled. "For you perhaps."_

_She glared at him evilly before marching angrily down the street._

_Twenty minutes later they arrived at the party, Tenten's glare in full force._

_Naruto sidled over to Neji. "Jeez man, what'd you do? Tell her she looked fat?"_

_Tenten's ears steamed as she turned to Naruto and screamed, "You want to know what he did?! He didn't tell me I was walking the wrong way and we got lost!"_

"_Yo," Kiba looked at her strangely. "This village is tiny and you live here. How the hell'd you get lost?" Akamaru affirmed his curioisity with a bark._

"_Well…" Tenten counted the seconds off in an effort to calm down. "We walked for a bit until we ran into an old friend from a mission I did a few months ago."_

"_Oh is this the Koji that Sakura-chan told me about? The one with the really dark eyes and t-" Ino was cut off by the laughter of said friend._

"_Ino-pig, you're married! You're not allowed to talk about that sort of stuff anymore!" She laughed some more as Shikamaru blushed slightly._

_Ino huffed, "Well, forehead, that doesn't mean I can't look."_

"_I think he begs to differ." Sakura laughed again at Shikamaru's peeved (well, it was peeved for him, anyways) expression._

"_Who's Koji?" Neji asked, looking every bit as disinterested as he had looked after beating her friend to a pulp._

_Tenten looked away. "Just a friend."_

"_Yosh! Our little flower's youthful…" Tenten sighed, thankful she had long ago learned how to tune Lee's insane rambling out. It seemed like none of the others had developed this talent. Well, Naruto didn't need it as he listened, seemingly captivated, by the flow of tears that Lee had somehow managed to shed._

_With Lee's constant spurts of youthfulness, the boys' drinking contests, and, amongst other things, Neji's persistent questions about Koji the night looked to be an interesting one._

_That was a major understatement._

Prologue: Part Two

One Of Those Mornings (This Is Such A Pity)

Hinata groaned as rays of sunshine made their way through her tightly closed blinds. She was supposed to rise with the sun, as per the Hyuuga custom. Sadly, she did not seem to have inherited the 'morning-person' gene that the rest of the clan had. She had chores to do, morning katas to perform, and a whole slew of 'future-clan-leader' related activities that needed to be completed before the morning meal was even served; the rest of her day was to be filled with many more activities along those lines.

All she could think of now was curling up in her bed and not leaving until the sun went down. _That sounds nice, _she thought, and as she was about to follow through with her thoughts an all too familiar bird began chirping (all too cheerfully for five in the morning) and did not seem to want to stop, right outside her window. Sighing quietly, she unlatched the window and unfurled the scroll that was clasped inside the bird's talons.

Sighing once more, she turned to her wardrobe and began getting dressed. It appeared something serious enough to rouse the Hokage from her drunken stupor and not cause her to destroy a decent portion of her office was happening.

Hinata smiled to herself. _At least Hanabi will finally have to do something besides training._

OoOoOoOoOoO

Tenten drummed her fingers impatiently on the armrest of the chair she was sitting. They were all here and had been waiting on of their anbu platoons to return for the past four hours. Even Hinata was starting to get a little restless.

_This has to be something important,_ she thought, _or else Tsunade-sama wouldn't be waiting for them to get here before telling us anything. _

She glanced around the room noting that nearly their entire group was present sans Kiba, Shino, Lee, Chouji, and Sakura, who were currently on a scouting mission in the Land of Waterfall.

Some of Konoha's ninjas had been sent there with a draft treaty approximately a month ago. Their bodies were found two weeks later at the border between Waterfall and Grass by her anbu platoon, hacked beyond recognition. Their dog tags had been the only identifying marks they'd been able to find on any of the bodies, which looked as if they'd been exploded from the inside out.

Tenten shuddered involuntarily but stopped as she noticed a pair of colorless eyes looking at her curiously. She gave Neji a small nod and smile before looking away again.

"Baa-chan! How long is it going to take for them to get back?" Naruto whined. She knew the monumental effort it had taken him to be quiet for the past four hours.

"Yeah, Tsunade-sama," added Ino from the corner of the room. She was sitting next to Shikamaru, who was currently staring out the window at a cloud that was floating by. "I thought you said they'd be here by now! You know Chouji and how much he hates being late!"

Naruto enthusiastically nodded his agreement, pretending not to notice the 'shut-up' glare that Sasuke was sending his way. "Something has to be wrong if they're not back yet and you're just being stup-"

Tsunade slapped him upside the head to quiet him down before she spoke. "If they're not back by this time tomorrow we'll send out a squad. Platoons are late all the time, Naruto. I'm sure they're fine." She sat back down before continuing. "You're all dismissed. Report back here a-"

Sakura suddenly burst through the door, limping very noticeably; her leg was swollen to about twice the size it was normally. Tenten silently noted that her normally brushed hair was wild with tangles and knots. There were dirt and blood stains covering every inch of her anbu uniform and some of the uncovered skin. Only half of her mask remained on her face.

"Sak-Sakura-chan, what happened to you? Where are the others?" asked Naruto as he moved to help support her. Sasuke was already holding her up.

She gasped loudly as her hands shot down to her swollen leg. "Tsunade-sama," she rasped. "You need to go to the hospital. The others are there." Tsunade pointed towards Ino, Hinata, and Shizune and they immediately left the room, for the hospital the others assumed.

Tsunade was already on her feet and was examining Sakura's leg as she spoke tersely. "What happened? You didn't heal this-"

"I didn't have the chakra to heal it properly. The others were incapacitated by some attack that, as far as I could tell, burst some of their blood vessels. Lee's carotid was definitely not flowing properly and Kiba had lost the ability to move his entire left side because there was no blood flow to the muscles. I couldn't perform a full scan – we had to get away." She winced as she felt Tsunade reset the bone in the four places it had been broken. "They couldn't move and only Shino remained conscious after being hit by it. He passed out two minutes later."

Sakura grinned without any trace of humour on her features. "You taught me that fusing the bone off center takes less chakra and I didn't have enough chakra left to heal it properly and save them. I used all the soldier and bloodstopping pills I had with me to try and stop their internal bleeding." She paused to massage her leg, noting that the swelling and pain were rapidly subsiding.

"Akamaru could only carry two of them, and he insisted on carrying Kiba. He also ran with Chouji on his back the entire way here." 

The others, even Naruto, were completely quiet as she was questioned about the mission.

"I had to carry Lee and Shino because the snails weren't responding to my summoning, and even then, they couldn't crawl back here fast enough."

Naruto couldn't be quiet anymore. "Sakura-chan, you should've picked something cooler to summon."

Tsunade whapped him on the head, again. "Frogs are disgusting, Naruto. And that Gamakichi doesn't even listen to you."

Naruto stuck out his tongue at her, only stopping when Sakura stood up, shakily. As she was about to fall over Sasuke grabbed her arm and pulled her back up. She smiled at him before continuing. 

"I guess I'm not used to walking normally yet."

"Hn."

"We ran non-stop for two days before we both needed to rest. I checked their injuries and their conditions appeared to be spreading to other, previously unaffected, parts of their bodies. That's when they found us again." She took in a large breathe, feeling like she was suffocating under the intense scrutiny of five stares.

"Akamaru guarded the four of them while I injected them with some of the poison I had in my pack. I nicked myself, though, when one of them wasn't as affected by the dosage as he should have been. I pulled the syringe out at an odd angle and cut my arm," she felt Tsunade grab her arm as she spoke, "while I jumped away from his bojutsu."

"We managed to lose them after that and we ran here right after. I dropped Lee and Shino off at the hospital and Akamaru stayed there. I figured that you'd need me to report anyway so I came here." As soon as she finished she sat right back down, sighing.

Sasuke spoke, for the first time that day. "Did you know what village they were from?"

"No," Sakura's brow furrowed in confusion. "But when we happened upon them, in Grass, it didn't seem like they were from that country. They were searching the one of the mountains in the Houko range, at the border between Earth and Grass. They were definitely high-level ninja but," she paused, furrowing her brow once more, "ninja from Grass usually use lightning or wind chakra - these ninjas used only earth and water techniques."

"Alright," Tsunade waved her hand and stopped Sakura from speaking. "We need to get you to the hospital." She grabbed Sakura's arm, noting the looking of disapproval on her face. "No ifs, ands, or buts. As for the rest of you…" Tenten stood and she and Neji moved towards the other four, "I'll give you the mission details there once I've had a chance to examine the others."

_Oh, that's right. _Tenten thought. _I completely forgot about that when Sakura came in._

She noticed that Sasuke refused to let Sakura walk on her 'injured' leg to the hospital. He said it would slow the rest of them down. She chuckled quietly before following the rest of them out of the tower.

OoOoOoOoOoO

Hinata wiped off the sweat that was rolling down her face. She had finally stabilized Lee after mending hundreds of tiny holes in his veins and arteries. It was truly a credit to Sakura's abilities that she had managed to keep them all alive long enough to get to the hospital.

"Hinata-san," she heard Shizune's crisp voice cutting through the ordered chaos of the operating room, "how's it going with Lee-san? Do you need help?"

"No, I'm nearly done, Shizune-san." She then asked, quietly, "How are the others?"

"The other three have been stabilized, though none of them have regained consciousness yet. They took a lot of internal damage." Shizune stepped towards the table, to inspect her work.

"You've done a very good job, Hinata-san." She then ordered a couple of the nurses to carefully move Lee to the same room the others were in. "Oh, the others are waiting on you in consult room three." She continued at Hinata's confused expression. "For the mission debriefing."

"O-oh, of course. Is there anything else you need, Shizune-san?"

"No no, you go ahead. We don't want Tsunade-sama to get angry."

Hinata left the room and walked towards the consult room as quickly as she could.

_I wonder what this mission is about. It probably has something to do with the allying ourselves to another country if she needs so many of us._

She stopped suddenly, realizing she had almost walked into the door. She knocked before entering.

"Good, you're here." Tsunade's voice was quite loud in the small room. Hinata noticed that Sakura was there, though one of her legs and arms were bandaged.

"You all know about the escalating tensions between shinobi countries, I'm sure." She sighed, even in her twenty-year old form she sounded quite old. "We need to ally ourselves with countries other than Sand if we're going to survive this time. It would be geographically convenient for Sand, Fire, and Earth to form an alliance so that we could coerce the smaller countries bordering our large ones to ally with us as well."

She paused to look at the shinobi gathered in the room. "When Gaara and myself proposed the idea to the council of elders in Earth they accepted it, with one condition."

"What's the condition, Baa-chan?" This time, it was Sakura who hit Naruto in warning. He quieted down again after mumbling "Always so mean to me," under his breath.

"They want the alliance to be more than just a peace of paper." Tsunade's gaze zeroed in on the three kunoichi sitting in front of her. "They want to solidify it through marriage."

OoOoOoOoOoO

Dictionary:

Tenrai Jiten – Thunder Spin. It's called this because of the loud sound the deflected weapons make as they collide with the user's chakra field. I made this technique up.

Tenketsu – the 365 points on a person's body that chakra can be let out from. Only certain Byakuugan users have the ability to see them as these holes are smaller than a needle-point in size.

Houko – treasure. The significance of the name of that mountain range, and it's location, will be revealed soon!

Chakra Typing - I made up the types of chakra that ninja from the Grass Country would use, those lightning and wind could work.

Countries – if you want a better idea of the geographical layout that is pretty important to the story please visit the following link, but remove the spaces between parts of it.

http ://en. wiki pedia. org /wiki / Naruto geography

That will help you understand how the three-way alliance between Earth, Sand, and Fire will benefit the three countries and why the Konoha ninjas always seem to be somewhere in Grass. 

If there are any terms I forgot here, don't hesitate to let me know! I'll fill you in on the meaning right away.

There was a lot of important information given in this chapter, information that probably doesn't stand out as important right now, but is crucial to the plot in the upcoming chapters. I won't be removing Arranged Marriage from the site until this story has caught up to that one; I feel that it's only fair. It would be nice to know what you guys think, so review away! Thanks again for reading!


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